Question

I came across a post on a different website asking an interesting question.

“Suppose a credible agent made you the following offer:

“We
propose to kill you, quickly and painlessly. In return, we will
construct an exact duplicate of yourself, perfect down to the
molecules. Your duplicate will have all your physical attributes,
abilities, and character traits. He will even remember having had all
your experiences. In short, no one will be able to distinguish the
duplicate from the previous you by any test whatsoever. We will also
pay that duplicate ten million dollars.”

Would you accept?”

I’d say that this double would be me in any meaningful way. I think if
we were able to replicate someone down to the molecular level then this
would include making a copy of my consciousness at the time of
duplication. As long as consciousness is the same I’d think even a
different body would still be me, though it would take a lot of
adjusting in that situation. In the case of duplication then I don’t
think I’d be losing anything and getting 10 million dollars out of it,
which seems like a pretty good deal to me.

The whole post is at
http://positiveliberty.com/2005/07/question-of-the-day.html For some
reason I’m not able to use this as a link after I’ve switched to a
linux system. Anyone know if there’s any kind of plugin for firefox or
something that I would be missing but was included when I had windows?
It’s also asking me for my password when I tried posting this once
before even though I said to remember my password and I also set the
cookies to always be allowed with www.paradoxdruid.com

One Response to “Question”

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That’s curious.
I guess it’s a function of whether you believe in a soul separate from your corporeal existence. That soul would be lost.
Of course, the corporeal duplicate would go on functioning.
I wonder what that would be like.

‘course, I’m a scientific determinist, and that more or less rules out souls.

Owen - July 31st, 2005 at 4:47 pm

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